The US comparison is interesting because (compared to Canada) the US has always had maybe a different attitude towards safety nets for working age people, in terms of how much people see that as a central role of governments in the first place. But even though people maybe didn't see it consciously as a necessary counterpart of the welfare state, the huge expansion post-war had also come alongside both relative improvements in income inequality and increasingly-accessible property ownership that meant many more working age people could do well on their own. I think the term "pre-distribution" (coined by political scientist Jacob Hacker) to describe policies that reduce inequality in market income rather than after-the-fact, actually describes a lot of inter-generational tensions well too. There's a question of budget fairness, but there's also a question of why young people are doing worse pre-transfers, and at least some of that is policy-driven. There's a political question about how you want to fix that that might not look the same across countries.
Most Canadians, me included, I think are comfortable with a somewhat bigger role for redistribution. But I think the thing that stood out to me (personally) is that a lot of the recent budget wins in Canada have come alongside continuing either an arguable lack of attention to why young people are doing poorly without help they didn't used to need to the same degree (like in treating "labour shortages" as a problem rather that the first upward pressure on wages in decades), or in the case of housing explicitly committing to goals like maintaining high home prices that make it harder for people to meet their needs in the market. So I think comparing between countries there's some room to be flexible on how you get to fair outcomes, even if spending has different age-balances.
The US comparison is interesting because (compared to Canada) the US has always had maybe a different attitude towards safety nets for working age people, in terms of how much people see that as a central role of governments in the first place. But even though people maybe didn't see it consciously as a necessary counterpart of the welfare state, the huge expansion post-war had also come alongside both relative improvements in income inequality and increasingly-accessible property ownership that meant many more working age people could do well on their own. I think the term "pre-distribution" (coined by political scientist Jacob Hacker) to describe policies that reduce inequality in market income rather than after-the-fact, actually describes a lot of inter-generational tensions well too. There's a question of budget fairness, but there's also a question of why young people are doing worse pre-transfers, and at least some of that is policy-driven. There's a political question about how you want to fix that that might not look the same across countries.
Most Canadians, me included, I think are comfortable with a somewhat bigger role for redistribution. But I think the thing that stood out to me (personally) is that a lot of the recent budget wins in Canada have come alongside continuing either an arguable lack of attention to why young people are doing poorly without help they didn't used to need to the same degree (like in treating "labour shortages" as a problem rather that the first upward pressure on wages in decades), or in the case of housing explicitly committing to goals like maintaining high home prices that make it harder for people to meet their needs in the market. So I think comparing between countries there's some room to be flexible on how you get to fair outcomes, even if spending has different age-balances.